The Illinois offense came out strong against Iowa on Saturday, opening the game with an impressive 12-play, 75-yard touchdown drive. It wasn’t an omen of things to come, however, as the Illini running game bogged down and Iowa scratched out a 33-23 win at home.
The Illini have to run the ball successfully to win. In its four wins this season, Illinois rushed for 167 yards against Nebraska, 336 yards against Charlotte, 357 yards against Penn State, and 185 yards against Minnesota. The Iowa defense wasn’t having any part of it.
“The run is kind of our bread and butter,” Illinois running back Chase Brown said after the game. “We kind of veered away from it in the earlier quarters and came back to it. But especially when we can’t get the ball moving, I think it’s tough because that’s kind of what we do.”
Illinois rushed 25 times and managed just 64 yards on the day. Brown rushed for 42, but he was slowed in the second half by an ankle injury. Freshman Josh McCray had just six carries for 16 yards. A rash of penalties also slowed Illinois down.
“Penalties, I mean, I think that’s the biggest thing,” Illinois’ acting head coach George McDonald said. “It’s kind of been a thing the last couple of games we start off on a positive play and now we’re back in the negative and that’s, for any team, hard to get over. We just had a couple of penalties on first down. You’re first and 25, and those are things we’ve got to just try to do and be better at and clean up.”
The Illinois passing offense has been one of the worst in the Big Ten this season – it ranked 13th in the conference coming into Saturday in passing efficiency – and while they threw for more yards (248) than they have in all but two of their other games Brandon Peters wasn’t consistent enough to carry the offense.
Peters finished 16-36 for 248 yards and two touchdown passes, but he also tossed two interceptions. Peters missed a couple of throws to open targets, including one to an open Daniel Barker that would have put Illinois in the red zone.
Three drops were also drive killers. You must limit mistakes against a talented Iowa secondary that leads the nation with 20 interceptions.
“I feel like we made some plays,” wide receiver Isaiah Williams said. “Probably left something out there, but their secondary, get they got a great secondary. We saw a lot of zone, we saw great corner and safety play.”
Eleven games into the Bret Bielema era, Illinois haven’t scored 30 points since its second game of the season against UTSA. The offense hasn’t kept pace with a vastly improved defense under coordinator Ryan Walters.
It’s been a season of growing pains and inconsistency. With just one game left on the schedule, they’ve yet to put it all together in any single game.
“I feel like we just need a game where we all come together,” Williams said. “Like we had the run game going and then sometimes the passing game sometimes not there. Today, we did a great job in the passing game, but we just couldn’t get the run. It’s hard to win games in the Big Ten if you can’t run the ball. We need a game where everything is balanced where we are able to run the ball and then we are able to make plays off the play action. Just doing simple things like that.”
So, Northwestern is up next. The Wildcats are experiencing a down season and have just one conference win. But Illinois was in a similar situation in 2019 against a bad Northwestern team and they lost that game too.
With chances of a bowl bid fading, the Northwestern game could present the final opportunity for the Illini to put it all together offensively.
“I think we’re close,” McDonald said. “I think it starts with turnovers and penalties and mental errors. Coach [Bielema] talks about it all the time and I think today there was the penalties, we had some turnovers late. But we just keep growing and we just got one more chance, one more opportunity to come together and put it all together.”
